Everything you thought you’d do differently in your second term in Durham

All things that did not quite go to plan


Everyone knows that first term doesn’t go to plan – but that’s ok, because by second term you’ll have your life sorted, right? Maybe not.

Here’s a list of all the things you thought you were going to do differently in second term, but did not:

You thought you’d go to every lecture

In the first few weeks of first term, you went to every single one of your lectures, as well as doing all the reading and extra work. But by the end, standards had fallen. What was the point of turning up to your Monday 5pm if all you were going to do was sleep through it?

You told yourself this term would be different, and it was – or at least until you remembered how much you hated that 9am after a Wednesday night spent at Lloyds.

You were going to join (and actually go to) lots of societies

It doesn’t matter if you don’t make all your contact hours as long as you’re productive in other ways. Or at least that’s what you said when you promised yourself you’d fill your free time with different societies. Despite having signed up for about 20 last term, you don’t actually belong to any.

By the time it got to the third week back and you still hadn’t discovered a new passion for quidditch or origami, you kind of knew that maybe extracurricular activities weren’t your thing. But you figured that’s ok, because you don’t need societies to become more well-rounded.

You were going to get so fit

Roll on one of the most infamous lies ever said – ‘I’ll do more exercise this term’. So what if you didn’t quite get round to going to the gym (or even signing up for it) last term? New year: new you. You don’t need to belong to a sports team or go to the gym to get fit, you can do it all by yourself.

But Durham is just so hilly. It seems crazy to attempt to jog up those mountainous hills at some crazy hour in the morning when you’d probably get fit enough just walking to lectures every day, right? Not to mention those late night walk backs from Paddy’s.

You were going to eat healthily

It’s not that you want to eat unhealthily, but when college is offering two different kinds of potatoes, it’s hard to say no. After all, over Christmas it was easy to forget just how good a late night pizza tastes on the way back from a night of Durham clubbing.

You were going to stop drinking so much

If you’re anything like me then one of your biggest resolutions from last year was that you were going to stop the excess drinking, and maybe cut going out down to once or twice per week rather than an ungodly number of times.

Plus you thought you’d have more work in second term anyway, which would mean you definitely wouldn’t go out as much even if you wanted to. But for some reason, it just became harder and harder to say no.

Maybe you’ve become too attached to Klute…